(Image courtesy of The Financial Times)
The outspoken CEO of Oracle has something to say about HP’s ouster of CEO Mark Hurd -- and he’s comparing it to a similar situation in the mid-‘80s when Apple’s own Steve Jobs was run out the company he founded by the “idiots” on the board of directors.
AppleInsider is reporting on the latest comment from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a personal friend of former HP CEO Mark Hurd, who was forced to resign last Friday amid sexual harassment claims. The New York Times reached out to Ellison for comment, and the executive responded with a “passionate” e-mail, comparing the current situation to the one faced by Steve Jobs in 1985.
"The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago," Ellison wrote. "That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn't come back and saved them."
Ellison is referring to Steve Jobs’ “second coming,” when he returned to Apple in 1997 after the company purchased his followup, NeXT, where much of the groundwork for Mac OS X (and subsequently, iOS itself) would eventually come from.
"In losing Mark Hurd, the HP board failed to act in the best interest of HP's employees, shareholders, customers and partners," Ellison concluded. "The HP board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false."
Indeed, it appears that HP’s board of directors push Hurd out based partly on the advice of “a public relations specialist who felt that the sexual harassment complaint could embarrass the company.” That deviates completely from Steve Jobs’ ouster from Apple, which Ellison uses for comparison only to illustrate that they were both bad decisions.
Hurd’s reign as HP CEO was definitely a successful one, with the company consistently ranking as the top-selling PC maker both on their home turf as well as internationally. In the June quarter alone, HP held a 25.7 percent market share in the U.S. on sales of 4.7 million PCs, with sales growing 14.2 percent year over year. It remains to be seen how Hurd’s departure might affect HP’s bottom line.
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